“The Silver Screen: Music and Film”

Yale Concert Band; Thomas C. Duffy, Music Director

• Costas Dafnis’s Parliament in Flight falls somewhere between the genres of symphonic tone poem and Discovery Channel-documentary soundtrack. The first movement focuses in on the quiet and mysterious beauty of the creature sometimes called “the great grey ghost of the north” while the second pans out to imagine a parliament (collective group of owls) rising majestically into flight. This performance of Parliament in Flight will be accompanied by an original animation commissioned from artist A. A. Roberts.

• Huck Hodge’s from the language of shadows was inspired by images from F.W. Murnau’s 1926 film Faust, as well as words and scenes from Goethe’s Faust and Christopher Marlowe’s 1604 play adaptation Doctor Faustus. Hodge’s music employs stark contrasts to capture the main character’s struggle between light and dark, good and evil, redemption and damnation. This performance will be accompanied by footage from Murnau’s film.

• Martin O’Donnell’s Music from Halo is arranged from some of the best-selling video game soundtracks ever released. The exhilarating yet ancient feel to the musical score has come to define the Halo experience in many ways—it is dynamic and interactive, designed so that the player feels that their personal game experience was scored. This performance will be accompanied by a compilation of footage from Halo game play.

• John Williams’s Star Wars Trilogy features two of the best-known film compositions in our time, “Darth Vader Death March” and “The Main Title Music”; two additionally recognized themes, “Princess Leia’s Theme” and “Yoda’s Theme”; and a hidden gem of the series, “The Battle in the Forest.”